The Space Rangers Came Across The Ruins Of An Ancient Observatory
The most incredible thing about this find, the rangers realized, is that thousands of years ago, members of this long-dead civilization may have been watching the rangers’ own home planets. Concept art by Leon Tukker. You can see more of Tukker’s striking work at ArtStation and Deviant Art. “The Old Observatory” is featured with the artist’s permission and was spotted on Geek Art Gallery. Concept by Lauren Davis Proposals Jake Sjet “Really?” Dr Ingram said, the barely contained rage in his voice sizzling through the static of the suit comms “We travel 40 light years through a loophole in physics, and the first thing you say when comforted by the unimaginable is ‘I thought it would be bigger?!” “Yeah...I mean they say the cryogenics shuts the brain down, but I’d swear I spent the trip imagine thing do-dad into something, I dunno...’more’?” sythozoic Caves on Venus are not remarkable. There are a whole set of waterless geological processes that can form them. And if we hadn’t started terraforming, we probably would have never noticed Cave #17 in the east peninsula of Pheobe Regio. As we strolled into the ruins Professor Ekwensi said, “Well, the radioactive debris lining the tubes of the assembly in front of us seem consistent with expected decay modes of particles of negative mass.” I’m just a trucker so I replied with “Huh? Wazzat? Standard English please!” Ekwensi clicked her irritation at having to unpack a lot of detail for me. She stopped and audibly sucked a lot of air. “Look, after loop quantum gravity was confirmed back in the 40s, one of the predictions it made was that there should be a pairing of negative and positive mass. Positive mass I’m sure you’re familiar with. We wouldn’t be able to stand on the face of Venus without it. Earth and Venus wouldn’t be spherical without it. “There were hints on the existence of negative mass even as early as the middle of the Twentieth Century, the Casimir effect, dark energy and so on. But if it existed, it would have very bizarre properties and, at the time, they never found any direct evidence that it actually existed. So it was dismissed as hypothetical. “Loop quantum gravity’s refinement changed all that. Now we know it has to be real. Loop gravity gave us expected subatomic decay patterns to look for but, these were so energetic that it seemed unlikely that we’d ever build particle accelerators big enough to generate some. It was the fundamental particle we couldn’t box, not with today’s technology.” She sweeped her hand towards the giant rings looming above. “This thing? This thing might give us proof. We think it might have been a machine that used or generated negative mass/energy. That’s why my team is here now.” Blakkar Not every civilization in the universe evolves and develops in the same way or the same order Humans did. It was a stark thing to realize that some civilzations developed the working equations of nuclear power before mathmeamticlly correct perspective. One has mastered gravity before they ever invented to electric lightbulb. They illuminated cities using gravity lensing to bend light around their world to shine on cities at night. Standing in the remains of a a strange structure, built thousands of years ago, the first real analysis revealed that this was some strange form of deep space scanner. The explorers had no idea how it worked. as they sent more data back to their ship, its vast computers worked diligently to resolve some basic questions, like what was it exactly. But one one the explorers took particular note of the design guessing, “This looks like some kind of magnifying array scanning its own scans.” “Like what? Taking a pictue then scanning a part of that picture?” the skeptic of the group snarked. “Sounds about right,” came a voice from the hovering drone nearby. It was a older voice, likely the lead scientist, back aboard ship. “that as assumes near or actually infinite resultion.” “If so they could probably resolve a planet hundreds, even thousands of light years away as if they were in orbit over that planet. Such a telescope could answer the question whether they are alone in the universe very easily.” A third explorer became increasingly impressed. “They could see what a planet was like what thousands of years ago?” The skeptic groaned as if to complain Great more work. “Plausible. That assumes it sees light.” the drone said. “Take some more scans and then come home. “By the way what happened this world some kind of Global war?” the First younger explorer asked bewildered by the people who had to have built this machine. “Meteor strike. Nickel Iron. At least three miles wide. With no evidence of even a rudimentary space infrastructure, no sats, no stations, not even one loose screw of space junk. My guess is they either had no way to reaching space, or no interest. They let their machine go there for them.” The drone answered. “..And they died. I guess I’m glad we choose to go there, and not just look, then,” the skeptic snarked again. “Yeah. Thanks Obama.” the third explorer snarked right back. Chip Overclock It took a few moments before the familiarity of the place came to them. They had stepped through the gigantic portal of the wormhole generator and travelled not through space, but through time. At least they would have plenty of opportunity to review the math. With not much in the way of distractions. JakeSjet “Really?” Dr Ingram said, the barely contained rage in his voice sizzling through the static of the suit comms “We travel 40 light years through a loophole in physics, and the first thing you say when comforted by the unimaginable is ‘I thought it would be bigger?!” “Yeah...I mean they say the cryogenics shuts the brain down, but I’d swear I spent the trip imagine thing do-dad into something, I dunno...’more’?”